The Stephen James Group, an authorised BMW and MINI Group with 7 dealerships across London and Kent, has seen a significant reduction in preparation time after adopting Cooper Solutions’ FullControl.
FullControl is a web based used stock management system and works to give dealerships complete control over used car stock. Analysis by Cooper Solutions has found that 40% of all used vehicles are sold for less than the budgeted profit per unit, and with retailers having just 45 days to make budgeted profit levels on used cars it means they are effectively in a race against time. It is therefore essential that dealers ensure that processes are in place to optimise speed and quality of preparation, helping them to turn stock around efficiently and quickly.
Using FullControl has helped the Stephen James Group successfully reduce its preparation time turn around as well as reducing time spent reporting, which for many retailers can be the difference between successfully achieving better than budget profit per unit or not. The system helps retailers stay on top of business developments with CDK extracts providing automated stocklists and controls at the click of a button. Stephen James benefits from an awareness of what is unprepared, prep statuses and measurement of how long it takes to prepare vehicles. CDK cannot give an indication of when a vehicle is fully prepared, so Full Control helps by providing retailers with a framework to track used stock from day 1 of it landing.
FullControl also helps retailers by reducing unexpected preparation costs, highlighting overage vehicles, providing sale price action history and reducing average order to delivery times. Iain Mackay, Used Car Stock Manager at Stephen James BMW, Enfield says: “Anyone who works in the used car industry can appreciate that there’s always one car that takes much longer to get out to the forecourt. There are many factors affecting how long a vehicle takes to be prepared and sometimes, it really is as simple as a car being blocked in somewhere on the dealer premises. FullControl helps us effectively manage preparation times by telling us the exact date a car came in enabling us to quickly focus on any cars that need to be prepared whilst avoiding overage stock.
“FullControl updates in real time, storing all the information we need for reporting as well as for producing comprehensive stock lists in one place. Using this system has significantly improved productivity and proved a big benefit to how we run our business.”
Andrew Whicher of Cooper Solutions says: “FullControl removes the need to manually maintain stock lists, instead benefiting from a much more accurate and timely stocklist as a result of CDK extracts. Changes made in CDK are reflected in real time in our solution. Newly adopted stock appears on For Sale stocklists sooner, and conversely, confirmed orders are removed immediately, price changes updated and it is quick and easy to differentiate between whether a car has been prepped or not. A general rule of thumb for all retailers should be a 3 day turnaround increasing to 5 days for a car that requires bodywork. It can be a struggle to measure this aspect of used stock.
“FullControl helps in various stages of the sales process. A good example of this is the integration of the FullCover fleet management system that provides date rate insurance for demos against retailer or group stock. Whilst providing management with real time actionable MI to increase stock turn and improve profitability of their used car business.”
